Heavy Lies The Crown
The 2005 version of Four Loko was slowly crawling along, but wasn’t able to find mainstream success. Perhaps, like the jungle juice it seems to be designed after, it was still a little too threatening to build a line at the cooler. The founders decided to reformulate, with the biggest emphasis being the removal of the absinthe active ingredient of wormwood and a focus on improved flavor. Knowing now that the final formula was “improved” in flavor makes it unsurprising the first iteration wasn’t a big hit. Wormwood could have a lot to do with this, as anyone who’s had absinthe can tell you that outside of alcoholic curiosity or a need to seem interesting at a bar, it is a fairly horrible drink.
2008 is also the year where the aforementioned Sparks chose to voluntarily exit the caffeinated alcoholic beverage scene, perhaps sensing things to come. Now owned by MillerCoors, I assume their legal team smelled the underage puke on the horizon and told them to get the f**k out of the business. They certainly missed out on big money, however, as Four Loko had an absolutely meteoric rise as distribution grew across the US over the next two years. From California surfers waking up in sand dunes to NYU students trying to fight fake Spider-man in Times Square, Four Loko had injected itself into the bloodstream of the country.
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Four Loko’s Fall From Grace
The timeline of Four Loko’s business, poetically, followed pretty much the identical trajectory of an actual night drinking Four Loko. It started with boundless energy, a feeling of total invincibility and confidence, and then ended in the hospital. Though the FDA had already been looking into the drink, in 2010 a rash of college student hospitalizations connected to Four Loko forced their hand. Colleges, retailers, and even whole-ass states banned the sale of the cursed drink. At first, Four Loko made motions to fight back, but perhaps, seeing the writing on the wall, voluntarily removed the caffeine and energy components of the beverage in November of 2010.
And so the “good” times ceased to roll. Four Loko still exists, but it now lives in the domain of the bang-for-your-buck daily alcoholic more than anyone looking to have a genuinely good time. Do I miss it? No. No, I really don’t. But I would still love to hear your Four Loko stories in the comments.